Knowledge cannot be imposed.
Ignorance can only be removed by an internal impulse of will.
This releases a willingness to learn, a search for knowledge and a shift in perception – all internally generated and self-sustained.
Knowledge can be offered. It is always available. But ignorance is obstinate, even among the well-meaning.
A question cannot be answered that has not been asked.
mc.
“In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts in the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an ever-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities and to unite herself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she for the first time upon this Earth devises self-conscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly attained. Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one’s evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence.”
and further…
“A given system of Yoga, then, can be no more than a selection or a compression, into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete combination by the great Mother in her vast upward labour.”
and more…
“Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the force of electricity or of steam to their normal operations in Nature. And they, too, like the operations of Science, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.”
and finally, its integration…
“No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: “All life is Yoga.””
Sri Aurobindo – The Synthesis of Yoga (Introduction, ch 1 – Life and Yoga, p2-3)
The Synthesis of Yoga
“All life is Yoga.”
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE CONDITIONS OF THE SYNTHESIS
Chapter I
Life and Yoga 5
Chapter II
The Three Steps of Nature 9
Chapter III
The Threefold Life 20
Chapter IV
The Systems of Yoga 31
Chapter V
The Synthesis of the Systems 41
PART I
THE YOGA OF DIVINE WORKS
Chapter I
The Four Aids 53
Chapter II
Self-Consecration 69
Chapter III
Self-Surrender in Works — The Way of the Gita 89
Chapter IV
The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of
the Sacrifice 106
Chapter V
The Ascent of the Sacrifice – 1
The Works of Knowledge — The Psychic Being 134
Chapter VI
The Ascent of the Sacrifice – 2
The Works of Love — The Works of Life 158
Chapter VII
Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom 188
Chapter VIII
The Supreme Will 208
Chapter IX
Equality and the Annihilation of Ego 221
Chapter X
The Three Modes of Nature 232
Chapter XI
The Master of the Work 243
Chapter XII
The Divine Work 264
Appendix to Part I
Chapter XIII
The Supermind and the Yoga of Works 279
PART II
THE YOGA OF INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE
Chapter I
The Object of Knowledge 287
Chapter II
The Status of Knowledge 300
Chapter III
The Purified Understanding 308
Chapter IV
Concentration 317
Chapter V
Renunciation 326
Chapter VI
The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge 335
Chapter VII
The Release from Subjection to the Body 343
Chapter VIII
The Release from the Heart and the Mind 350
Chapter IX
The Release from the Ego 356
Chapter X
The Realisation of the Cosmic Self 368
Chapter XI
The Modes of the Self 374
Chapter XII
The Realisation of Sachchidananda 383
Chapter XIII
The Difficulties of the Mental Being 391
Chapter XIV
The Passive and the Active Brahman 400
Chapter XV
The Cosmic Consciousness 409
Chapter XVI
Oneness 419
Chapter XVII
The Soul and Nature 426
Chapter XVIII
The Soul and Its Liberation 436
Chapter XIX
The Planes of Our Existence 446
Chapter XX
The Lower Triple Purusha 457
Chapter XXI
The Ladder of Self-Transcendence 465
Chapter XXII
Vijnana or Gnosis 475
Chapter XXIII
The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis 488
Chapter XXIV
Gnosis and Ananda 498
Chapter XXV
The Higher and the Lower Knowledge 511
Chapter XXVI
Samadhi 519
Chapter XXVII
Hathayoga 528
Chapter XXVIII
Rajayoga 536
PART III
THE YOGA OF DIVINE LOVE
Chapter I
Love and the Triple Path 545
Chapter II
The Motives of Devotion 552
Chapter III
The Godward Emotions 561
Chapter IV
The Way of Devotion 571
Chapter V
The Divine Personality 577
Chapter VI
The Delight of the Divine 587
Chapter VII
The Ananda Brahman 593
Chapter VIII
The Mystery of Love 599
PART IV
THE YOGA OF SELF-PERFECTION
Chapter I
The Principle of the Integral Yoga 609
Chapter II
The Integral Perfection 616
Chapter III
The Psychology of Self-Perfection 623
Chapter IV
The Perfection of the Mental Being 632
Chapter V
The Instruments of the Spirit 643
Chapter VI
Purification — The Lower Mentality 654
Chapter VII
Purification — Intelligence and Will 663
Chapter VIII
The Liberation of the Spirit 674
Chapter IX
The Liberation of the Nature 682
Chapter X
The Elements of Perfection 691
Chapter XI
The Perfection of Equality 698
Chapter XII
The Way of Equality 709
Chapter XIII
The Action of Equality 721
Chapter XIV
The Power of the Instruments 729
Chapter XV
Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality 740
Chapter XVI
The Divine Shakti 752
Chapter XVII
The Action of the Divine Shakti 762
Chapter XVIII
Faith and Shakti 771
Chapter XIX
The Nature of the Supermind 783
Chapter XX
The Intuitive Mind 799
Chapter XXI
The Gradations of the Supermind 811
Chapter XXII
The Supramental Thought and Knowledge 825
Chapter XXIII
The Supramental Instruments — Thought-Process 841
Chapter XXIV
The Supramental Sense 862
Chapter XXV
Towards the Supramental Time Vision 885
Appendix to Part IV
Chapter XXVI
The Supramental Time Consciousness 907
infiniti science 